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Tuesday, 29 January 2008

The Real Scandal

The real scandal exposed by the Derek Conway affair is that positions such as those nominally held by his sons are only open, even when they are being filled properly, to people who can afford to live in Central London on pay of only eleven thousand pounds per annum. In other words, to independently rich people. And even the Green Book restricts them to university graduates.

Instead, just as there should be a ban on any party funding except of an individual candidate by resolution of a membership organisation (whether the Midlands Industrial Council, the GMB, or whatever) the name of which would appear in brackets on the ballot paper, so there should also be at least a firm expectation that jobs such as this be filled from a pool maintained by that organisation, which would match the public salary of those thus appointed.